Republican Job Killers and the Export-Import Bank

“At a time when we want to compete around the world, it is hard to believe what is happening in the U.S. Congress,” said Jeff Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric.

“The ultimate irony is that we are on the verge of an American manufacturing renaissance,” bemoaned Jim McNerney, the chairman of Boeing. “Yet this action is causing companies to start looking outside the U.S. instead.”

“People complain that the bank only helps big companies,” said Doug Oberhelman, the chairman and C.E.O. of Caterpillar. “A lot of our suppliers are small. They don’t export, but we do. And if we aren’t exporting, they aren’t selling to us.” He added, “I find it staggering that we would put highly paid export-oriented jobs at risk.”

What Oberhelman finds “staggering,” Immelt finds “hard to believe” and McNerney finds ironic is the refusal of Republican extremists — led by the House Financial Services Committee’s chairman, Jeb Hensarling — to allow a vote on the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a vote that would pass in a landslide. The Ex-Im Bank, which insures and sometimes finances export sales, had to stop making deals at the end of June, when its reauthorization deadline came and went.

Although the Ex-Im Bank still exists, it has been reduced these days to managing its portfolio, rather than underwriting or insuring new deals. According to Boeing, its foreign rival Airbus, which can tap not one but three export credit agencies, is spreading the word to potential aircraft customers that Boeing can no longer compete when bids require sovereign insurance. That is hardly the only such example.

The damage this is doing to our economy is starting to become clear. In recent weeks, Boeing, America’s largest exporter in dollar volume, made two sobering announcements: first, that Asia Broadcast Satellite canceled an $85 million satellite contract expressly because there was no Ex-Im support. (Boeing is hoping to renegotiate.) More recently, Kacific, a Singapore-based satellite company, told Boeing not to bother bidding on a satellite contract, again because of a lack of Ex-Im financing.

As a result, McNerney told me, “layoffs in the hundreds” have taken place in Boeing’s satellite division.

This week, it was G.E.’s turn to make Ex-Im-related news. First, it said it would move 400 jobs to France to manufacture — and export — gas turbines, and 100 final assembly jobs to Hungary and China. Then it said it would create a new turboprop center in Europe that would employ up to 1,000 people. In both cases, G.E. said the moves would allow the company to take advantage of European export credit agencies.

When I spoke to Immelt, McNerney and Oberhelman, whose company also uses the agency, they all sounded astonished that this important tool, which they need to compete with companies abroad, was being taken away for purely ideological reasons.

“If no other country had export financing, that would be one thing,” said Immelt. “But that’s not where the world is. What you are really doing is helping Siemens and China Rail” — companies that rely heavily on their countries’ export financing.

Immelt told me that G.E. currently has $11 billion in potential deals that require export credit agency financing. That’s real money, even for General Electric.

McNerney pointed out that many big deals require export financing for the bid to even be considered. He also noted, ominously, that 10 to 15 percent of Boeing’s aircraft exports are dependent on Ex-Im support. Losing that business would be devastating for the company, and its employees.

When asked about the accusation from the right that the Ex-Im Bank is a classic case of government picking winners and losers, Oberhelman said that “if this doesn’t change, we’re all going to be losers.”

The anti-Ex-Im Bank faction is having a glorious time mocking the G.E. and Boeing announcements. A spokesman for Heritage Action for America, the conservative think tank leading the charge, described G.E.’s moves as “multinational crony capitalism.” Hensarling issued a statement claiming Boeing could finance the satellite deals itself to prevent layoffs; “it just chooses not to.”

And an unidentified financial services committee staffer told Politico that the loss of 500 G.E. jobs was a drop in the bucket for a company that employs 136,000 people in the U.S.

That heartless quote reminded me of an anecdote in “Confidence Men,” Ron Suskind’s book about the Obama administration’s financial team during the president’s first term. Some of Obama’s top advisers wanted to let Chrysler fail. But in a critical meeting, Ron Bloom, a former adviser to the United Steelworkers who was a member of Obama’s Auto Task Force, said, “Mr. President, these are the reasons we can’t kill this company. The damage to these communities and people will never be undone.”

Chrysler was ultimately saved because the president’s advisers suddenly understood that it was their role to save jobs, not to sacrifice them on the altar of economic purity. What will it take for the Republicans to come to the same realization?